'They said I'd never leave the chorus'

Tony Bennett's musical career has charted seven decades. Here, he tells Tony Clayton-Leaabout meeting racism in the army, the dangers of Las Vegas and how his son turned his life around

The 1930s

‘For me it was the best music of that period’

I grew up in Queens, New York. We were fairly poor, but I remember my uncle was a tap dancer in vaudeville, which made me curious about the entertainment business. I recall listening to the likes of Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Eddie Canto, Louis Armstrong and many more. They were all about 10 years my senior but I was amazed at what I heard from them.

For me, it was the best music of that period, something of a renaissance that happened in the United States. I believe that in the 1920s the music was even better, and of course, in the 1940s and 1950s, there was such an amount of wonderful, popular songs. I don’t think there has been any other country to come near that level of creativity in songcraft.

The 1940s

‘I’ve been against racial prejudice ever since’

It was horrible. The lowest form of human nature, the violence that people do to each other. There’s so much in life to enjoy, but war is truly the folly of mankind.

When I was in the army, a racist incident changed my life. I was demoted because I once had dinner with a black friend of mine from high school. I was a corporal and they ripped my stripes off. A bigoted officer sent me to Graves Registration as a punishment. I’ve been against racial prejudice ever since.

I came out of the second World War as an infantry man, and under the GI Bill of Rights in the US they allowed us to choose any school that we might want to go to – this was to make up for the loss of education we had when we were serving in the army.

As a result I chose the American Theatre Wing, which had teachers for the likes of theatre, classical training, voice training. The person who coached me in bel canto had her place on 52nd Street and she taught me not to imitate any other singer, because, in her words, I’d just be one of the chorus. What she advised me to do was to listen to musicians and find out how they phrase.

I chose the truly great piano player Art Tatum for the way he made a production out of a song, something that was ahead of its time. Stan Getz had a beautiful honey sound to his saxophone, so I tried to get my voice to imitate that. I put the influences of Tatum and Getz together and I got my style that way.

The 1950s

‘I was the only white kid in the show’

It really started for me in the 1950s. The singer Pearl Bailey saw me on a television show and took me under her wing. She became my sister in showbusiness. She booked me for a revue show in Greenwich Village. It was fun because Bob Hope was at the Paramount with Jane Russell and he went down to see Pearl Bailey. He got a kick out of me because I was the only white kid in the show.

I was just starting out as an amateur and I was using the name of Joe Bari, but Hope didn’t like it. He said it was a phony name. I told him my real name – Anthony Dominic Benedetto – but he said it was too long for the billing on the marquees so he suggested I change it to Tony Bennett.

Before the war, I grew up in the Big Band era – bands like Count Basie, Woody Herman, Stan Kenton and Duke Ellington – but after the war, inflation had built up and it was too expensive to have such big orchestral outfits on the road. So those bands broke into small groups and intimate cabaret performances. That’s when the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis and Sammy Davis Jr began to play in tiny clubs.

That made us quite popular, so the promoters put us into theatres.

The 1960s

‘The audience became our teachers’

It took us about six years before we felt we were consummate performers. That was a great apprenticeship because the audience became our teachers. They showed us what they did and didn’t like. They made sure we didn’t stay on stage too long and how to put a sense of humour into the performance in order to make it all work.

The record corporations are powerful because they’re all built on money, but it can be very uncreative, and they force the artists to sing what they think the public will like. Audiences are highly intelligent, yet the corporations will try to change an honest artist into selling something stupid to the public, something silly so that it will sell fast. They can force artists to lose their integrity.

I don’t like to insult an audience or to make them think in any way that I’m superior to them. I dislike performers that think that way. I think it’s an honour to perform in front of people who have to save money and who have to work hard in order to buy a ticket to see me. I respect that very much.

The 1970s

‘It was the end of all the promises I had grown up with’

The 1970s was a bad time for me and for the whole of America. At the end of the 1960s, we had assassinations – Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King – and in many ways it was the end of all the promises I had grown up with. To have those promises smashed because of bigotry was the world becoming insane.

It’s a bit of a myth to say that the 1970s for me were something of a meltdown. What really happened was that I was playing in Las Vegas at that time and Las Vegas made so much money that personal lives were overlooked.

I think that it seemed to outsiders that careers were going down, but it happened for just about eight months and then things started getting better.

The 1980s – today

‘My son Danny changed my life around’

My son Danny took on the task of managing me, and frankly, he changed my life around. I don’t like performing in large stadiums and I’m not into making vast amounts of money, or trying to be bigger than anyone else.

The major thing that Danny noticed was that my music was anti-demographic. Record companies will tell you that youth is all and that major venues are the best, but I’m not so sure about that.

I do two things – I sing and I paint. The painting goes back a long, long time to when I was a kid studying art at school. Now, it’s wonderful – I’m in three museums in America, and the Smithsonian has also accepted three of my paintings.

I get the same from painting as I do from music. The same basic laws apply to both: economy of line, less is more, learning when to stop and the balance of form and colour. That pertains to music as much as to the brush. When I’m in Ireland I plan to visit west Cork and paint for a few days. I hear the landscape is tremendous. I was advised to go there by a lady friend of mine. She told me I wouldn’t believe how beautiful it is and that it boasts the most gorgeous scenery an artist could ever wish for.

Tony Bennett plays the Marquee in Cork tomorrow